Wall-mounted dispensers for soap, lotion and hand care products in general are well known in the art. These generally consist of a wall-mounted cabinet or dispenser per se with a chamber for receipt of refills or cartridges containing the soap or other product. For purposes of simplicity throughout, "soap" will be used to describe the product being dispensed with it being understood that other skin care products can be and are dispensed in this fashion and, also, that the present invention is not limited to apparatus for dispensing skin care products per se inasmuch as other flowable products may also be dispensed with the present pump.
The dispensers of the prior art, as noted, generally include the dispenser which includes a base mountable on a wall or counter top and a cover, usually hinged to the base to provide access to the interior. The base includes various types of receptacles or shelves designed to support and position a cartridge, bag or box which itself contains the soap and which is replaceable so that the dispenser can be refilled when the supply is exhausted.
These cartridges or refills take various shapes and forms in the prior art. Perhaps the most common currently used are the so-called "bag-in-box" arrangements which include a collapsible bag, which actually contains the soap, and a box for storage and transportation of the bag. The box has a tearaway portion on one face and is simply placed inside the dispenser when needed, following which the tearaway portion is removed and the soap is dispensed from the bag through an elongate tube or pump which extends downwardly from the bag and terminates in a nozzle which, when properly positioned, projects from the bottom of the dispenser. In this way, soap may be dispensed onto the hand of the user, generally by utilization of a hand-operated lever which compresses the tube pump. The most common forms of the prior art involve a lever which is engaged by either the heel of the hand to depress and activate the pump or tube to dispense the fluid onto the palm and fingers of the hand, or by the fingers of the hand to pull the lever toward the user to similarly depress and activate the pump and dispense the soap.
All of these arrangements involve some sort of nozzle and pump arrangement which generally include various types of valving to control flow of the soap by opening the tube to the reservoir or cartridge to fill it and then closing off the reservoir or cartridge and opening a valve to the nozzle to permit the soap to actually be dispensed. It is desirable in most instances to dispense a measured charge of the soap with each actuation of the handle and, therefore, the tube/pump is generally elongate so as to accommodate a "charge" of the product. Examples of this prior art can be readily seen in many U.S. patents, such as, for example, Bartasevich U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,772; Bell U.S. Pat. No. 5,443,236; Bell U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,877; and Kanfer U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,749. The prior art contains many other variations on this general theme.
In general, the prior art of this general nature has in common the fact that the elongate tube extends from the bag or other reservoir and terminates in a nozzle which projects from the bottom of the dispenser. The soap is dispensed by engaging a pressure member, as above described, which presses against the tube with the tube serving as the actual pump to expel a measured charge of the material through the nozzle.
As can be seen in the prior art just referred to and other prior art well known to those versed in this art, the dispensers themselves are of a relatively standard overall size because they must fit in a fairly confined space in a washroom or restroom. This size, of course, has a bearing on the size of the refill or cartridge, and thus on the amount of soap, which can be stored within the dispenser. A review of the references referred to above and the other prior art well known in this field will show that the elongate tube occupies a fairly significant portion of the overall interior height dimension of the dispenser. To some extent, at least from the standpoint of how much soap can be stored at a given time, this space is wasted because the major portion of the soap is stored in the bag.
Furthermore, the various valving arrangements and the tube and its associated fitments are relatively expensive to manufacture and are also somewhat labor-intensive to assemble.
Additionally, the bags are generally transparent and many of the prior art dispensers are provided with a sight window in the cover, thus enabling one to view the bag and, theoretically, to ascertain when the bag is empty. However, in practice, the sight window must be located fairly high up on the cover, and thus, one can only ascertain when the supply is low and not when the bag is empty. That requires opening the cover to view the bag which, unless the bag is truly empty, is a wasted operation.
Accordingly then, it is believed that an improvement can be made by reducing the size of the actual "pump" structure to replace the tubes of the prior art, thereby enabling a dispenser of a standard size to provide more interior space so that a greater quantity of soap can be stored, thereby reducing the number of refill replacement operations required over the life of the dispenser.
Furthermore, by utilizing a clear, collapsible dome to perform the pumping operation, one can ascertain when the bag is empty without unnecessarily opening the cover.